ISO 14000 (Environmental Management)

Introduction

ISO 14000, maybe not many people are familiar with this kind of ISO before. Honestly, even I before don’t know there is ISO 14000, but it’s ok, I hope this article can explain little bit about ISO 14000, because this is also important besides ISO 9000 family, which is more popular in the world.
Before talking about ISO 14000, I will little bit talk about the organization, which is ISO or International Organizational for Standardization. ISO is a really huge organization, and this organization has 157 members Countries. Until now ISO has already published 17000 International Standards(1), ranging from standards for activities such as agriculture and construction, through mechanical engineering, to medical devices, and the newest is information technology development. ISO’s officially operation started on 23 February 1947, in Geneva, Switzerland. This was not long after delegates from 25 countries met in London in 1946, and they decided to create a new international organization. The objective from this organization is “to facilitate the international coordination and unification of industrial standards”.
After talking about the organization, now I will write little bit about what is “standard” and why we need standard. Standard is a norm or requirement. It’s usually a formal document. And a standard can be classified as a standard when what we do is always based on this standard. Next why do we need a standard? Standards make an enormous and positive contribution to most aspects of our lives. Standards ensure desirable characteristics of products and services such as quality, environmental friendliness, safety, reliability, efficiency and interchangeability - and at an economical cost. When products and services meet our expectations, we tend to take this for granted and be unaware of the role of standards. However, when standards are absent, we soon notice. We soon care when products turn out to be of poor quality, do not fit, are incompatible with equipment that we already have, are unreliable or dangerous.


ISO 14000 Families

First maybe we need to know what ISO 14000 is. ISO 14000 is a series of international standard on environmental management. It provides a framework for the development of an environmental management system and supporting audit program.(2) This standard is born as result of Rio Summit on 1992 on Environment Held. And of course there are some histories behind these standards. Before ISO created an international standard for environmental management, there was national standard called BS 7750. But after that ISO created a group to investigate how such standards might benefit business and industry. As the result, this group recommended that an ISO committee to create an international standard. At the concrete action they formed Strategic Advisory Group on the Environment (SAGE) in 1991, to consider whether such standard could serve to:
  1. Promote a common approach to environmental management similar to quality management
  2. Enhance organizations' ability to attain and measure improvements in environmental performance
  3. Facilitate trade and remove trade barriers.
There are 2 major standards on ISO 14000 which are:
ISO 14001 is the standard against which organizations are assessed. ISO 14001 is generic and flexible enough to apply to any organization producing and/or manufacturing any product, or even providing a service anywhere in the world.
ISO 14004 is a guidance document that explains the 14001 requirements in more detail. These present a structured approach to setting environmental objectives and targets and to establishing and monitoring operational controls.
These are further expanded upon by the following:
ISO 14020 series (14020 to 14025), Environmental Labeling, covers labels and declarations.
ISO 14030 discusses post-production environmental assessment.
ISO 14031 Evaluation of Environmental Performance.
ISO 14040 series (14040 to 14044), Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, discusses pre-production planning and environment goal setting.
ISO 14050 terms and definitions.
ISO 14062 discusses making improvements to environmental impact goals.
ISO 14063 is an addendum to 14020, discussing further communications on environmental impact.
ISO 14064-1:2006 is Greenhouse gases – Part 1: Specification with guidance at the organization level for the description, quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals.
ISO 14064-2:2006 is Greenhouse gases – Part 2: Specification with guidance at the project level for the description, quantification, monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emission reductions and removal enhancements.
ISO 14064-3:2006 is Greenhouse gases – Part 3: Specification with guidance for the validation and verification of greenhouse gas assertion.
ISO 19011 which specifies one audit protocol for both 14000 and 9000 series standards together. This replaces ISO 14011 meta-evaluation—how to tell if your intended regulatory tools worked. 19011 is now the only recommended way to determine this.

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Environmental Management 2002


Why we need ISO 14000 Families

As we know and see from time to time, Economies and Industries are going bigger and bigger. In other side they bring more and more harm to our environment. As an example, as we notice from time to time pollution rate in Earth is more higher and higher, and also from time to time we have more and more problem because of this pollution rate. Pollution rate is only one from many aspects that can bring harm to our environment, and imagine when we don’t care about these facts; maybe soon enough we can’t live in earth anymore, that’s why we need such a new standard which concerns about our environment. And these Standards need to be International standards and can be implemented in all countries. And also this standard can give concrete result to our environment. And based on facts, until 2001 there are 37000 organizations from 112 countries already implemented this standard. And it’s still growing until now.


References

http://www.iso14000-iso14001-environmental-management.com/iso14000.htm
http://www.iso.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_14000
http://nipc.mporg.ir/VideoC/Files/GP%20and%20IMS/materials/IMS_Module2.pdf